Drawing standards management and quality control

Abstract

The method of the present invention comprises an on-line single source of CADD standards information from a network based user interface application, accessible from within a CADD drawing application, to deliver CADD drawing standards information to a CADD drawing, and any other information that may be included in a feature table or other compilation of standards information at the request of the client. In addition, the interactive capability of the network user interface application of the present invention further provides CADD standards information that is centrally managed, controlled and accessible at one source via a network connection.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION[0001]Not applicable.STATEMENT REGARDING FEDERALLY FUNDED SPONSORED RESEARCH OR DEVELOPMENT[0002]Not applicable.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0003]1. Field of the Invention[0004]The design drawing, on paper or other medium, is a visual means of interpreting and relaying a design from an architect or artist to an engineer or designer. The engineer or designer then adds any necessary additional information to the design drawing to communicate to the manufacturer or contractor how to implement the design of the architect or artist. The drawing may also be used as a basis for a bid tabulation, to determine the cost of construction, and other uses.[0005]Before the invention and wide spread utilization of “computer aided drafting and design”, or simply “computer aided design” in the art, (hereinafter, CADD) the production of design drawings was largely a manual effort. Quality design drawings required an individual well trained in the art of drawing and...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0043]An additional advantage of the present invention over the related art is that the CADD standards reside in one location on the network but are available to every networked computer in the world. There is no software to deliver or install on the computer for the CADD user since the standards are accessed and input through the network accessible application user interface menu. Any network accessible designer in the world can open the application network user interface application and begin choosing standards and placing symbols in their drawing since the standards and any other required information resides on a remote network accessible server or other computer.

[0044]The method of the present invention differs from the related art in that design drawing standards for CADD drawings were initially compiled in written manuals and made available to the draftsman. The draftsman would have to manually look up each object in the manual to determine the associated standard and attributes, and change each bit of information in the CADD application to meet the required standard. In the method of the present invention, the user selects from an on-screen menu which is reading the network based application of the present invention and immediately provides access to the up-to-date standards feature table resident in the single source network server.

[0045]The method of the present invention further differs from the related art in that changes or additions to standards are immediately available at the same time to all users through the network. The advantage is that the CADD Administrator can have full assurance, in real time, that everyone on the design team, wherever they are, is using an identical set of CADD standards.

[0046]The methods of the present invention further differ from the related art in that information related to a standard may be embedded electronically in the computer file of the CADD drawing. An example of embedded information, in addition to the attributes of a standard, would comprise price or cost information of the object in the drawing. Such Information would generally not be shown in the completed drawing but would be embedded in the CADD drawing electronic file from which it could be retrieved when needed. Once retrieved by the appropriate computer application, the embedded information could be immediately presented to the user in a readable format. For example, the cost of an object to purchase and install could be determined as the object is added to the drawing by including that information in the network application feature table along with the standards. A further advantage of including embedded cost information with a drawing standard is that the cost information could be set to automatically update from a linked database or similar compilation of cost information, thus providing reliable costs estimates to the user based upon the most current cost data. Therefore, the user would have the assurance of the most up-to-date cost data estimates as the basis for any analysis for a bid tabulation, asset valuation or loan valuation.

[0047]A further advantage to including embedded information with a standard is that lists of quantities such as volume, units, linear details, distances, etc., could be compiled, analyzed and compared to a chart to create a bid tabulation.

[0048]The method of the present invention further differs from the related art in that portions of the CADD drawing constructed from information obtained from the user interface application of the present invention may be extracted electronically and analyzed for a particular purpose, or further divided and analyzed as needed into smaller and smaller sub-sets. Thus the method of the present invention provides scalability of the standards compilation for use and analysis. The advantage is the ability to isolate certain portions of the CADD drawing and mine or manipulate the associated data as needed.

Problems solved by technology

A lengthy set of written CADD standards tended to slow the design process as a user would have to search the list before beginning to draw an element.

The impact of manual placement of standards is significant to time and cost.

The impact of researching and setting standards from the written source for each element is that it impedes progress on the project, slows the design and drawing process, lengthens the project completion time, increases the labor requirement since more draftsmen are required to finish the project in the time allotted, and, therefore, increases the overall cost of completion of the drafting project.

They do not develop and market an application tool for a specific set of standards for a client, but they do make the functionality available for each client or consultant to develop their own method of standards interaction with the application.

There are other companies who provide consulting and programming services but do not offer a comprehensive suite of software such as ALTIVASOFT or AXIOM.

In summary, the drawings may not be accurate if the designer has not installed the latest standards update version before submitting the drawings to the client.

With potentially hundreds of draftsmen from various consultants, companies and / or government organizations working simultaneously on a construction project, it becomes increasingly difficult for the CADD administrator to manage the plurality of standards in any one project and maintain quality control by determining and guaranteeing that every drawing has implemented the latest required version of the relevant standards.

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